‘New Security’ in Cyberspace: Emerging Intersection between Military and Civilian Contingencies

From the outset, the emergent national and transnational networks of automated, inter-connected information systems were expected to create beneficial communities. Unfortunately, unpleasant contingencies more like those of turbulent urban environments have emerged in the undesired challenges to individual and group security from these spreading global and critical networks. The ‘netted’ nations of the West are acting more like global neighbouring cities in their increasingly similar social burdens and competition for resources seeping across real and virtual borders. At the same time, with the rise of both wider global networks and highly-Webbed military technology, the global military community is developing new, broader notions of the contingencies for which they must be prepared. In this process, on-going since the Gulf War of 1991, millions of defense research and acquisition budget dollars have been, and continue to be, aimed at solutions for these newly perceived broadening responsibilities. The surprising result is a growing intersection between the capabilities being sought and developed in the most modern of militaries, the services of the US, and the emerging needs of the wider civilian community in meeting new contingencies. This article discusses this growing intersection in meeting internet-borne societal threats or in applying internet-enabled responses to intentional or unintentional social disruptions. While these trends are largely seen, today, in the US military and society, they portend similar possible developments around the globe. Not only is the US currently defining the dominant notions of a ‘modern’ military, it is also the incubator nation for global notions of a computerized society     

Defining qualitative assessing parameters of Iran banks website

The present research aims to provide list of qualitative parameters of bank websites in Iran in order to provide a pattern for designing bank web services and assess the extent of the banks’ success in obtaining qualitative necessities and on-line customer-orientation. According to the other researchers’ findings, websites qualitative parameters are categorized into four groups: efficiency, reliability, attractiveness, and responsibility. Delphi technique is the methodology employed in order to analyze the degree of these factors in Iranian electronic banking users. All the four above-mentioned factors, as the websites qualitative parameters, were true about Iran banks, too. Nevertheless, there was no agreement of the way of attracting the customers to security issues. Iranian banks can set these parameters as their pattern in order to reduce the expenses of lost opportunities and improve the quality of their own website services. Qualitative parameters obtained from the results of this research suggest priorities for designing Iranian banking websites. These factors can be considered as the indexes in assessing the degree of success in providing the customers’ needs.     

Rethinking ‘IT/IS use in a technological mature society’ from the actuality point of view: critical learning in reflection on SSM meeting about ‘IT/IS use’

The history of the human-centered system movement (Gill in AI Soc 10(2), 1996) tells us that information technology (referred to as IT below) has come to dominate our life-world or societal functions. Since from 1990s, its streaming influence could be called ‘abnormal.’ Since entering the twenty-first century, the IT system has been on automatic acceleration and has been spreading more and more rapidly to many facets of our lives. In many sectors, this ubiquitous streaming of IT is seen to be central to societal development, and in a Japanese sense, IT could be seen as a resource to realizing technologically a mature society. This trend of IT seems to be unstoppable. In this sense, IT dominance can be regarded as abnormal to the point that IT-centered information systems (referred to as IS below) fall far short of the deep appreciation of the complex and diverse life needs of people and societies, and this leads to the implementation of IT/IS from technological perspective, with a belief that everything, which we can do could be and should be, done now by IT/IS. However, as IT/IS have become to be embedded in many facets of societies and are influencing over our everyday life, we need to examine them not from the point of ‘capability’ but ‘allowability,’ in other words, not from the perspective of technology (cognition), but from the prospective of intuition and feeling of actual life (action). We term reality as seen in the narrow sense of cognition and actuality as seen in terms of action (Uchiyama in Theory and practice of actuality, Daito Bunka University, Tokyo, 2003). We draw a distinction between the two classes of ‘IT/IS’ systems, those which belong to the ‘reality’ and those which belong to the ‘actuality.’ To appreciate this distinction, we propose that this requires not only an understanding of the design of these IT systems but of the methodology of their use and their evaluation. To carry out the process of evaluation of IT/IS systems, we need to develop a new ‘appreciation’ methodology which enables us to rethink ‘IT/IS’ as ‘A system to use IT/IS.’ This idea is similar to the idea of Beck’s (World risk society theory (trans: Shimamura K), Chikuma Scholastic Collection (in Japanese), 2010) reflecting the modern. So, we propose a strict distinction between the two systems classes of ‘IT/IS’ which we call belonging to the ‘reality’ and ‘A system to use IT/IS’ which we call belonging to the ‘actuality.’ The methodology to deal with ‘actuality’ has not yet been developed, but Checkland and Poulter’s (Learning for action, Wiley, New York, 2006) soft systems methodology (referred to as SSM below) intends to deal with this kind of class of systems, that is, ‘human activity systems.’ He uses the key concept of ‘accommodation’ which means ‘to live with different individual world views based on sharing of actuality,’ and thus, he proposes to overcome the idea of consensus which is the agreement with the ‘reality’ level. In this paper, we adopt a methodology based on the SSM’s accommodation and not based on the consensus on the ‘reality’ level. By using such a methodological thinking, we reconsider the problem of evolving technologically a mature society which can be seen as a problem relevant to ‘A system using IT/IS’ rather than the problem of IT/IS itself. In doing so, we could draw some innovative orientations in the field of IT/IS which by traditional methodology could not be drawn. It is not certain whether our attempt could make a difference to the runaway of IT/IS. We illustrate this purpose by studying a workshop process which highlights that even participating experts of IT/IS themselves felt apprehensive about the more and more focus on the implementation of IT/IS solutions both in the present and the future. We believe that the first step toward this purpose is to explore the new orientation of IT/IS use. The aim of this first step is to make a difference to the ‘abnormal’ situation and hope to create a foothold for the reorientation of ‘A system to use IT/IS.’     

Understanding the intentions of users to ‘stick’ to social networking sites: a case study in Taiwan

Social networking sites (SNSs) are the most popular social platforms for developing personal networks. They provide multiple interactive functions for users to create and use large social networks. To determine why people exhibit ‘stickiness’ to SNSs, this study uses the uses and gratifications theory as an underlying structure and builds the research model with factors of motivational needs and interactivity. Our results showed that social needs, information needs, human–message interaction, and human–human interaction are crucial factors that affect the ‘stickiness’ of users to SNSs. The implications of these findings are presented in this paper.     

A computer-based approach for analyzing consumer demands in electronic word-of-mouth

Consumer opinions are one of the most valuable assets that enterprises have, and thus questionnaires are often employed to investigate the views of consumers. However, this approach requires a large amount of human labor and time, and, most importantly, it cannot automatically find out consumers’ needs. However, many consumers now share their appraisals of products or services through electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). Since these usually reflect consumer needs, and thus their demands, collecting and analyzing eWOM data has become a key task for many businesses. Nonetheless, current eWOM-related research focuses on its transmission, influence, issues, and marketing, and there seem to be very few studies that apply eWOM to develop consumer needs analysis systems. In order to effectively collect and analyze eWOM data, this study proposes a computer-based approach for analyzing consumer demands. The approach utilizes sentiment analysis to develop extraction methods for use with eWOM appraisals. It thus uses eWOM appraisals to find out consumer demands. This work integrates eWOM with information technology to develop an approach to computerize consumer needs analysis. It is expected that the results will help enterprises to improve the quality of their products and market competitiveness.     

Going back to basics in design science: from the information technology artifact to the information systems artifact

The concept of the ‘information technology (IT) artifact’ plays a central role in the information systems (IS) research community's discourse on design science. We pose the alternative concept of the ‘IS artifact’, unpacking what has been called the IT artifact into a separate ‘information artifact’, ‘technology artifact’ and ‘social artifact’. Technology artifacts (such as hardware and software), information artifacts (such as a message) and social artifacts (such as a charitable act) are different kinds of artifacts that together interact in order to form the IS artifact. We illustrate the knowledge value of the IS artifact concept with material from three cases. The result is to restore the idea that the study of design in IS needs to attend to the design of the entire IS artifact, not just the IT artifact. This result encourages an expansion in the use of design science research methodology to study broader kinds of artifacts.     

Real‐Time Major Events Monitoring and Alert System through Social Networks

The volume of information generated by social and cellular networks has significantly increased in recent years. Automated collection of these data and its rapid analyses allow for better and faster detection of major (in terms of National impact) ‘real life’ events. This study uses data obtained from social networks such as Twitter and Google+. It proposes a mechanism for detecting major events and a system to alert on their manifestation. The article describes the considerations and needed algorithms required to develop and establish such a system. The methodology presented here is based on linking major events that occurred in Israel during the years 2011–2014, with information extracted from social networks. Results indicate that alerts were received shortly after the event occurred for most of major events. Such are large fires, earthquakes and terror attacks. However, attempts to achieve alerts for ‘local’ secondary events failed. This as their impact on the social network is low. Furthermore, it was found that the volume of false alerts depends on the type of domain and keywords.     

Privacy is dead,get over it! 1 Information privacy and the dream of a risk-free society

The use of information and communications technology and the ‘digitalisation’ of everyday tasks has resulted in a paradigm shift where vast amounts of personal information about individuals, their opinions and habits is generated and stored in the databases of those providing online services. The mere existence of those data pools has created ‘unwholesome’ desires in both private and public organisations which cover that data for their own purposes. This article looks at the way in which the ‘market value’ of privacy seems to be falling as individuals are persuaded to disclose information about themselves in order to minimise real or perceived risks. It examines the way in which our perception of risk has changed in recent years and the way in which that perception may be manipulated. It analyses the link between risk perception, data processing and individual concepts of privacy as well as the dangers that increased privacy intrusion represents for the relationship between the individual and the state and the relationship between citizens.     

Understanding consumer intention in online shopping: a respecification and validation of the DeLone and McLean model

The increasing popularity of online shopping has led to the emergence of new economic activities. To succeed in the highly competitive e-commerce environment, it is vital to understand consumer intention. Understanding what motivates consumer intention is critical because such intention is key to survival in this fast-paced and hypercompetitive environment. Where prior research has attempted at most a limited adaptation of the information system success model, we propose a comprehensive, empirical model that separates the ‘use’ construct into ‘intention to use’ and ‘actual use’. This makes it possible to test the importance of user intentions in determining their online shopping behaviour. Our results suggest that the consumer's intention to use is quite important, and accurately predicts the usage behaviour of consumers. In contrast, consumer satisfaction has a significant impact on intention to use but no direct causal relation with actual use.     

Towards Better AAA in Identity Federations

ABSTRACT

Many organizations have adopted SAML-based identity federation as a standard component of their enterprise architecture. A service provider in a federation may be viewed as a combination of an assertion consumer service (ACS) responsible for interactions with other federation participants (such as identity providers, or IDPs) and an application that provides useful functionality to end users. More often than not assertion consumer services are shared among multiple applications, but the current usage only exposes the ACS’s name to other parties in the federation, not the names of the applications. Identity providers in higher assurance federations frequently provide authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) services with application-level granularity, and this usage pattern prevents them from knowing the applications on whose behalf federation requests are made. In this article we propose a solution that enables an ACS to generate, and an IDP to consume, this missing information. Our approach is to extend the existing SAML 2.0 proxying capability by allowing references to applications that participate in the SAML ecosystem but do not support SAML themselves. We conclude that simple changes in information technology practices (supported by the necessary enhancements in vendor products) can significantly improve application-level AAA in environments with shared assertion consumer services.     

基于决策树方法的银行客户关系管理的研究和应用

数据挖掘中的决策树算法在银行业中有很重要的价值。决策树技术应用于银行业中,可以通过对特定的客户背景信息的分析,预测该客户所属的客户类别,从而采取相应的经营策略,这样既可以提高银行服务的服务水平,开发客户资源,避免客户流失,又能够节约资源,利用最小的投入,获得较大的收益。在银行贷款业务中,判断贷款对象是否有风险,贷款方案是否可行,将客户按照银行的实际需求进行分类,这些问题通过决策树算法都可以解决。     

Data mining of social networks represented as graphs

In this survey we review the literature and concepts of the data mining of social networks, with special emphasis on their representation as a graph structure. The survey is divided into two principal parts: first we conduct a survey of the literature which forms the ‘basis’ and background for the field; second we define a set of ‘hot topics’ which are currently in vogue in congresses and the literature. The ‘basis’ or background part is divided into four major themes: graph theory, social networks, online social networks and graph mining. The graph mining theme is organized into ten subthemes. The second, ‘hot topic’ part, is divided into five major themes: communities, influence and recommendation, models metrics and dynamics, behaviour and relationships, and information diffusion.     

Smart cities in the new service economy: building platforms for smart services

Recent changes in service environments have changed the preconditions of their production and consumption. These changes include unbundling services from production processes, growth of the information-rich economy and society, the search for creativity in service production and consumption and continuing growth of digital technologies. These contextual changes affect city governments because they provide a range of infrastructure and welfare services to citizens. Concepts such as ‘smart city’, ‘intelligent city’ and ‘knowledge city’ build new horizons for cities in undertaking their challenging service functions in an increasingly cost-conscious, competitive and environmentally oriented setting. What is essential in practically all of them is that they paint a picture of cities with smooth information processes, facilitation of creativity and innovativeness, and smart and sustainable solutions promoted through service platforms. This article discusses this topic, starting from the nature of services and the new service economy as the context of smart local public services. On this basis, we build an overall framework for understanding the basic forms and dimensions of smart public services. The focus is on conceptual systematisation of the key dimensions of smart services and the conceptual modelling of smart service platforms through which digital technology is increasingly embedded in social creativity. We provide examples of real-life smart service applications within the European context.     

ANEMA: Autonomic network management architecture to support self-configuration and self-optimization in IP networks

The increasing scale, technology advances and services of modern networks have dramatically complicated their management such that in the near future it will be almost impossible for human administrators to monitor them. To control this complexity, IBM has introduced a promising approach aiming to create self-managed systems. This approach, called Autonomic Computing, aims to design computing equipment able to self-adapt its configuration and to self-optimize its performance depending on its situation in order to fulfill high-level objectives defined by the human operator.In this paper, we present our autonomic network management architecture (ANEMA) that implements several policy forms to achieve autonomic behaviors in the network equipments. In ANEMA, the high-level objectives of the human administrators and the users are captured and expressed in terms of ‘Utility Function’ policies. The ‘Goal’ policies describe the high-level management directives needed to guide the network to achieve the previous utility functions. Finally, the ‘behavioral’ policies describe the behaviors that should be followed by network equipments to react to changes in their context and to achieve the given ‘Goal’ policies.In order to highlight the benefits of ANEMA architecture and the continuum of policies to introduce autonomic management in a multiservice IP network, a testbed has been implemented and several scenarios have been executed.     

A Hierarchical Location Model for Locating Bank Branches in a Competitive Environment

Recent developments in the provision of banking services are expected to affect the structure and the organization of modern banks significantly. Consequently, it has become necessary for most banks to reorganize their service network. In this context we demonstrate how demand–covering models may be combined with geographical information systems (GIS) to determine the optimal location of bank branches, taking into account the various factors that characterize local conditions within the demand area. The essence of the proposed models is to employ a GIS to represent various criteria concerning the demand for banking services (geographical, social, economic, etc.) as well as the competition in each particular area. This information is then taken into account by appropriate demand–covering models which determine the locations that achieve the maximum capture of the demand. Finally, we present some initial results concerning the application of this approach by a major Greek commercial bank.     

Banks and information technology: marketability vs. relationships

This paper evaluates the impact of information technology (IT) on the operations of banks and the structure of the banking industry, including implications for stability. On the one hand, banks can focus on relationship banking and use IT developments to tailor services to individual needs and build enhanced, albeit modified, relationships with customers. On the other hand, IT better allows banks to exploit economies of scale and scope, which are most evident in transaction banking. Another manifestation of IT is via financial innovations that have enhanced marketability. Stability enters the picture because increased marketability facilitates opportunistic behavior. Together with enhanced herding behavior and changes in industry structure, this could undermine stability and augment systemic risk, calling for a regulatory overhaul.     

Flexible Web services integration: a novel personalised social approach

Abstract

Dynamic composition or integration remains one of the key objectives of Web services technology. This paper aims to propose an innovative approach of dynamic Web services composition based on functional and non-functional attributes and individual preferences. In this approach, social networks of Web services are used to maintain interactions between Web services in order to select and compose Web services that are more tightly related to user’s preferences. We use the concept of Web services community in a social network of Web services to reduce considerably their search space. These communities are created by the direct involvement of Web services providers.     

Modelling the acceptance of internet sites with domestic-violence information

Both in terms of prevalence and impact, domestic violence is a significant problem in modern society. The current study investigated women's acceptance of internet sites with domestic-violence information as an additional source of support. Perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, social influence and awareness of sites were predictors of intention to use sites. However, awareness and experience of domestic violence predicted use of sites. We argue that technology acceptance needs to be studied in the context of a detailed analysis of ‘Everyday Life Information Seeking’ to better understand acceptance and as a basis for designing effective support sites.     

Extracting trust information from security system of a service

The issue of trust is a research problem in emerging open environments, such as ubiquitous networks. Such environments are highly dynamic and they contain diverse number of services and autonomous entities. Entities in open environments have different security needs from services. Trust computations related to the security systems of services necessitate information that meets needs of each entity. Obtaining such information is a challenging issue for entities. In this paper, we propose a model for extracting trust information from the security system of a service based on the needs of an entity. We formally represent security policies and security systems to extract trust information according to needs of an entity. The formal representation ensures an entity to extract trust information about a security property of a service and trust information about whole security system of the service. The proposed model is applied to Dental Clinic Patient Service as a case study with two scenarios. The scenarios are analyzed experimentally with simulations. The experimental evaluation shows that the proposed model provides trust information related to the security system of a service based on the needs of an entity and it is applicable in emerging open environments.